Applications that used named colors, such as Pantone®-brand colors, typically either store continuous-tone gray-scale images in an associated file using well-known formats, such as Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), or store an image in a proprietary format, which requires special specific software to render the associated image. In the case in which continuous-tone gray-scale images are used, a device such as a printer processes the gray-scale image as tint levels associated with a particular named color. In the latter case, devices such as printers must be capable of handling the proprietary file format.
In either of these cases, the associated images tend not to be portable. Specifically, these images cannot be easily transported to any device and viewed in a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) fashion without the use of software that is knowledgeable of the storage format.
Accordingly, this invention arose out of concerns associated with providing improved palette-based, multi-tint, named-color methods and systems.